News Articles with Category: Energy Systems

New material steals oxygen from the air: One spoonful absorbs all the oxygen in a room

September 30, 2014 – via University of Southern Denmark Researchers have synthesized crystalline materials that can bind and store oxygen in high concentrations. Just one spoon of the substance is enough to absorb all the oxygen in a room. The stored oxygen can be released again when and where it is needed.

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New High-performance Supercapacitor Developed in California

September 11, 2014 – via University of California Riverside The UCR scientists developed a new three-dimensional carbon nanotube porous foam. The large nanoscale pores on the foam’s surface ease the infiltration of electrolyte, while also allowing them to store energy much more densely than in other supercapacitor designs. The foam is made by depositing graphene and carbon nanotubes over a nickel substrate via chemical vapor, followed by a successive deposition of nanoparticles of hydrous ruthenium oxide (RuO2).

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Energy Breakthrough, A Supercapacitor Battery Made From Hemp

August 22, 2014 – via University of Alberta Hemp fibers are heated over the course of 24 hrs, causing the material’s carbon atoms to align and form nanosheets, each of which are only one carbon atom thick, and which can be used as conductors in batteries.

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Graphene may be key to leap in supercapacitor performance

August 20, 2014 – via IDTechEx

 Graphene electrodes are one of the best prospects for enabling supercapacitors and superbatteries to take up to half of the lithium-ion battery market in 15 years – amounting to tens of billions of dollars yearly. They may also be key to supercapacitors taking much of the multibillion dollar aluminium electrolytic capacitor business. That would make supercapacitors and supercabatteries (notably in the form of lithium-ion capacitors) one of the largest applications for graphene.

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NASA selects proposals for advanced energy storage technologies

August 9, 2014 – via NASA The proposals are intended to produce new power sources, such as the fuel cell used in this Scarab lunar rover

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New supercapacitor design stands up to abuse

May 20, 2014 – via Vanderbilt University The new device that Pint and Westover has developed is a supercapacitor that stores electricity by assembling electrically charged ions on the surface of a porous material, instead of storing it in chemical reactions the way batteries do. As a result, supercaps can charge and discharge in minutes, instead of hours, and operate for millions of cycles, instead of thousands of cycles like batteries.

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Submarine Drones Drive Demand For Subsea Power Plants

May 17, 2014 – via Office of Naval Research The “Persistent Renewable Energy for Undersea Systems (PREUS)” program is one of the more intriguing concepts begin considered by the Office of Naval Research. The PREUS program is developing generators that will be able to convert heat from geothermal vents on the ocean floor into electric power.

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Clever harvesting scheme takes a deep dive, literally

January 30, 2014 – via NASA – JPL The approach is based on phase-change material (PCM) which melts and expands at warmer temperature, and freezes and contracts at lower temperature. This material is placed in a container filled with hydraulic oil, so as the PCM expands, it pushes the oil out into another container, eventually reaching pressures as high as 3000 psi (about 21 MPa). A valve then opens and lets the pressurized oil go out, and the expelled oil turns a generator, which in turn charges a battery.

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Robust 3D Graphene Structures Curiously Created With Ancient Technique, Enabling Super-Capacitors

January 27, 2014 – via International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics (MANA) The bubble structure allows free movement of electrons throughout the network, meaning that the graphene retains full conductivity. Not only this, but the mechanical strength and elasticity of the 3D graphene is extraordinary robust- the team were able to compress it down to 80% of its original size with little loss of conductive properties or stability.

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Submerged AUV Charging Station

January 22, 2014 – via NASA Tech Briefs Potential uses include studying ocean climate change, pollution, salinity, and currents.

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Graphene Supercapacitors Ready For Electric Vehicle Energy Storage, Say Korean Engineers

November 12, 2013 – via MIT Technology Review Built high-performance supercapacitors out of graphene that store almost as much energy as a lithium-ion battery, can charge and discharge in seconds and maintain all this over many tens of thousands of charging cycles.

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Supercapacitors Amp Up as an Alternative to Batteries

September 20, 2013 – via National geographic Supercapacitors can boost or replace batteries in vehicles, storing energy as an electrical charge.

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Battery/Supercapacitor Systems for Pulsed Power Paper to be Presented by ESL at IEEE Energy Conversion Congress & Expo

September 10, 2013 – via Electro Standards Laboratories Electro Standards Laboratories has developed a novel estimation methodology that can be used to evaluate the potential benefits of implementing hybrid battery-supercapacitor systems to improve battery life.

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Oxygen ‘Sponge’ Presents Path to Better Catalysts, Energy Materials

August 28, 2013 – via Oak Ridge National Laboratory Typically, most elements have a stable oxidation state, and they want to stay there. So far there aren’t many known materials in which atoms are easily convertible between different valence states. We’ve found a chemical substance that can reversibly change between phases at rather low temperatures without deteriorating

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WFS Introduces Contactless Power Solution for Recharging Underwater

April 26, 2013 – via Subsea World News The WPT (Wireless Power Transfer) solution enables contactless recharging or powering of equipment in demanding offshore environments, avoiding wet mate/stab connections at depth and reducing electrical failure.

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UCLA engineers craft material for high-performance ‘supercapacitor’

April 14, 2013 – via UCLA Discovery could provide rapid power to small devices, large industrial equipment

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Sponge-like graphene makes promising supercapacitor electrodes

October 12, 2012 – via Phys.org Sponge-like graphene, which can be used as electrodes in supercapacitors with ultrahigh power density and relatively good energy density.

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Supercapacitors pushed as EV power source

October 8, 2012 – via EcoSeed supercapacitors have the potential to be a big player in the search for reliable green energy across the world, especially for transportation

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Hamilton Sundstrand joins list of companies developing propulsion for long-endurance surveillance UUVs

August 5, 2012 – via Military and Aerospace Electronics Hamilton Sundstrand researchers will concentrate on demonstrating energy-dense proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC)-based air-independent propulsion for a future generation of large, long-endurance surveillance UUVs.

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Long-endurance unmanned submarine development heats up with propulsion contract to General Atomics

August 3, 2012 – via Military and Aerospace Electronics ONR has awarded General Atomics a potential $20 million contract to develop energy section technology for the Navy’s Large Displacement Unmanned Underwater Vehicle Innovative Naval Prototype (LDUUV INP) program.

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Office Of Naval Research Looks To Industry For LDUUV Energy Solution

August 3, 2012 – via Inside the Navy An analysis of alternatives is ongoing for the LDUUV, as the Navy seeks to field a UUV that can handle bigger payloads while trying to solve the problem of how to power the vehicle in the most efficient way.

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FuelCell Energy Awarded $3.8 Million Contract by U.S. Navy to Develop Power System for Unmanned Underwater Vehicle

July 26, 2012 – via Global Newswire The SOFC fuel cell stack is based on the technology developed by Versa Power Systems, an SOFC developer that is partially owned by FuelCell Energy. Other team partners include the Energy Systems Division of NASA’s Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, Yardney Technical Products, Inc., Naval Underwater Warfare Center (NUWC), and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL).

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LDUUV Contract Award to General Atomics

July 20, 2012 – via Fed Large Displacement Unmanned Underwater Vehicle Innovative Naval Prototype(LDUUV INP Energy Section Technology Base IDIQ Contract

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The Power Challenge For Small Unmanned Vehicle

July 2, 2012 – via Aviation Week One key advantage of unmanned vehicles is that their persistence is not limited by the human operator. This also means their size is set by the payloads and sensors that they carry, not by the need to accommodate a pilot or crew. But in many cases, this now means that unmanned systems run into an energy limit, both in terms of endurance and their ability to deliver power to radars, lasers and communications links.

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Photovoltaic Cells Tap Underwater Solar Energy

June 7, 2012 – via Naval Research Laboratory High-quality gallium indium phosphide (GaInP) cells are well suited for underwater operation. GaInP cells have high quantum efficiency in wavelengths between 400 and 700 nanometers (visible light) and intrinsically low dark current, which is critical for high efficiency in lowlight conditions.

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Unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) research pulls into the fast lane, led by ONR contracts

June 4, 2012 – via Military and Aerospace Electronics There’s suddenly a lot of exciting work going on in unmanned underwater vehicles, or UUVs for short. One of the most influential research organizations pushing UUV technology forward is the Office of Naval Research, or ONR, in Arlington, Va.

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Organic hydrogel outperforms typical carbon supercapacitors

June 1, 2012 – via ARS Technica Yi Cui and Zhenan Bao of Stanford University have made a hydrogel (water-based gel) using a conducting polymer. When used as electrodes in a supercapacitor, the new material has a capacitance about three times greater than a typical carbon supercapacitor. It’s also cheap to build and operate.

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NexTech developing energy system for underwater drones

May 31, 2012 – via Business First NexTech Materials Ltd. is developing a system that uses rocket missile fuel, oxygen and a fuel cell in a space the size of a torpedo tube to power the vehicles.

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Lynntech to develop prototype propulsion and power system for future long-endurance unmanned underwater vehicles

May 30, 2012 – via Military and Aerospace Electronics The U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR) in Arlington, Va., are asking engineers at Lynntech Inc. in College Station, Texas, to develop a prototype propulsion and power system for a future long-endurance UUV under terms of an $18 million contract awarded earlier this month.

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Supercapacitors replace batteries

May 4, 2012 – via IDTechEX This article shares some of the research carried out for the new IDTechEx report, Electrochemical Double Layer Capacitors 2013-2023.

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Navy Chief: Robotic Subs Might Span Oceans. (Someday.)

March 19, 2012 – via Wired It’s been the Navy’s dream for years: undersea drones that can swim entire oceans. But it’s been thwarted by science’s inability to build propulsion and fuel systems for a journey of that length.

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API wins second SBIR grant from Navy

February 27, 2012 – via Boulder County Business Report API Engineering will use the grant to continue research and development work on oxygen generation technology for fuels cells that can be used underwater.

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4 REASONS WHY SUPERCAPACITORS WILL EVENTUALLY GO MAINSTREAM

January 11, 2012 – via The Environmental Blog It holds four very important capabilities and attributes that could force the development of new electric energy technologies that would no longer be too dependent on batteries alone.

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Hungry Hungry Robots

January 10, 2012 – via Stuff.co.nz A Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC) harnesses the electrical activity of microbes as they feed on the organic mix coming from the stomach. The electricity produced – quite miniscule at present – is collected by the MFC and used to charge the robot.

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Water Drones

January 9, 2012 – via Defense News In this case, the grail is an unmanned submarine smart enough to sense and avoid obstructions, powerful enough to stay out on months-long missions without detection, and cool enough to keep computers from overheating. Those are among the challenges facing the companies and universities vying to provide ideas to the U.S. Navy about how to power and autonomously navigate a Large Displacement Unmanned Undersea Vehicle (LDUUV), a development project led by the U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR).

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Navy Developing Microbe-Powered Space Rover

January 9, 2012 – via TPM Idea Lab The Office of Naval Research has been exploring the use of microbes in fuel cells for a number of years, primarily for sensing equipment used to monitor ocean environments.

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Hydrogen From Water With The Help Of Aluminum

December 1, 2011 – via Maritime Propulsion In an attempt to improve the range of UUVs, the alternative energy company AlumiFuel Power
Inc, (API) researching on behalf of the US Navy, into possible use of hydrogen generation
using steam and aluminum

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Drexel’s Gogotsi Questions Accuracy of Battery Performance Metrics

November 29, 2011 – via Drexel University In a piece published in the November 18 edition of Science, Gogotsi, who is the head of the A.J. Drexel Nanotechnology Institute, calls for a new, standardized gauge of performance measurement for energy storage devices that are as small as those used in cell phones to as large as those used in the national energy grid.

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Will Supercapacitors and Batteries be Coupled to a Hybrid Soon?

September 7, 2011 – via Nanowerk News A pulse supercapacitor is an “Energy storage” component with high capacitance and low internal resistance (ESR) that unlike a battery is built to deliver pulses of current almost endlessly (hundreds of thousands of charge/discharge cycles) and can be calmly recharged by a battery during the standby time between the pulses. Hybrids of Battery and SC are coming more and more popular and recognized by the engineers.

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ENDURANCE TEST

August 18, 2011 – via AUVSI The US Navy says it will invest heavily to produce ship-safe, long-endurance power for its unmanned underwater vehicles that will allow multi-week missions

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ONR BAA11-028 Large Displacement Unmanned Underwater Vehicle Innovative Naval Prototype (LDUUV INP) Energy Section Technology

August 4, 2011 – via ONR The Office of Naval Research (ONR) is interested in receiving proposals for an energy dense air-independent, rechargeable/refuelable energy system for the Large Displacement Unmanned Underwater Vehicle Innovative Naval Prototype (LD UUV INP).

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External Combustion Engines for Military Applications

May 12, 2011 – via Raytheon Raytheon engineers are addressing the need for an alternative power source through the use of external combustion engines and monopropellant fuels. The team investigated a number of engine types. Particularly promising technologies included a modified Rankine cycle engine developed by Cyclone Power Technologies, Inc.

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Cyclone Power Technologies Successfully Completes R&D; Project for Raytheon Company

February 16, 2011 – via Cyclone Power Technology The tests verified by Raytheon demonstrated that Cyclone’s prototype, water-cooled Stingray engine achieved thermal efficiencies over 30%. Applied to a large diameter unmanned undersea vehicle, such efficiency yields double current payload capacities and triple the current mission times.

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Hydrogen fuel for thought

October 5, 2010 – via Rice University New research by Rice University scientists suggests that a class of material known as metallacarborane could store hydrogen at or better than benchmarks set by the United States Department of Energy (DOE) Hydrogen Program for 2015.

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